For VR to succeed, it needs evangelists. Will it get them?

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After years of impatiently waiting, the latest generation of virtual reality headsets are nearly here. Facebook alone has dumped over two billion dollars into the VR market, and countless developers are dedicating thousands of man-hours to make brand new titles for these shiny new platforms. This isn’t just a fun novelty anymore — it’s big business.

The stakes are huge, so everyone involved is scrambling to ensure that we don’t see a repeat of the 90s-era VR flops. Solid hardware and impressive games are vital, but those already seem to be in place for the launch window. To ensure widespread success, what these VR companies need are evangelists: People that can pound the pavement, and make sure the public is getting exposed to the highlights of modern virtual reality.

In preparation for next year’s big VR extravaganza, I grabbed a Google Cardboard viewer to experiment with. I spent a couple hours fiddling with it, pushing it to its limits, and making myself a little nauseous in the process. And while it’s fairly limited, it still delivers the immersive experience I was craving. For about 20 bucks or so, it offers a nice taste of what the full-fledged VR helmets of 2016 will bring us.

However, it’s worth noting that my own experience was somewhat tainted by foreknowledge. I’ve been keeping a close watch on the VR industry since Oculus came on the scene back in 2012, so I was well aware of the strengths and weaknesses before I touched it. To get an accurate idea of what the experience is like for VR virgins, I had my family use it over the Christmas break.

Across the board, it was a major hit. Simply running Google Street View in VR wowed them, and showing off a photo sphere of my kitchen made their jaws drop. After they went through a handful of demos, they were sold — all of them were VR converts. This lines up perfectly with everything I’ve heard before: Seeing is believing for virtual reality. The moment people experience modern VR in person, their interest spikes.

No amount of traditional advertising is going to make VR a financial success. Sony, Valve/HTC, and Facebook need to invest in demo stations in every big box store. Trailers filled with VR headsets need to be parked at every state fair in the country. Go out into the community, let the public try out the hardware, and you’ll have a hit on your hands.

With that said, the PC-focused headsets probably won’t get that kind of attention just yet — they’re going to be out of the reach of most people. Since you’re going to need to drop somewhere around $1,500 to get up and running from scratch, those helmets are only going to sell to serious gaming enthusiasts for the time being — not average consumers. But if Sony can sell a PlayStation VR to just one fifth of the current PS4 install base at roughly $350 a pop, that’s over $2 billion in gross revenue. That’d certainly make quite a splash, and encourage even more companies to enter the fray.

I agree with the basic premise, but I also think there has to be a really diverse set of VR activities. My fast twitch days are over, but my love of puzzles wrapped in good plots is still going strong. Give me something like the best Infocom games in a free roaming environment and I’ll live in a VR environment.

… and extremetech… You have to do something to get this site back to the speed it used to be. I’m thinking twice about pulling up extremetech articles because it slows down my entire browser. Typing is lagging terribly.

Kyle

I consider the people at my job to be the “low bar”, and they all seem ecstatic since one of them got a Samsung Gear and a Google Cardboard.

I don’t think VR will have any problems catching on. The only worrying thing is whether or not the more expensive headsets will gain some traction. Serious PC gamers are about the only ones who can easily run something like an Oculus, and only a portion of those will be interested in dishing out the cash for it.

The technology in the 90s had a number of problems due to the hardware limitations of the decade. Resolution was a pretty big part of that, as it really stunted the experience from something that felt almost real, to something that felt like an arcade game.

Ekard

If the big sell on VR becomes content consumption (Movies, Shows, interactive stories – you know, a VR version of “choose your adventure”) then Gear VR and other low power solutions will be fine.

If gamming is the big push for VR, we still have another decade before non-gaming machines will be able to handle VR. Hell, we are still not at full 1080p gaming on iGPUs. To run “ultra” settings > 30fps @ 1080p, you still require a card around the 950. That’s entry level gaming machine but not casual, and we just hit this parity in 2015.

In all honesty, I would rather content consumption drive VR adoption while gaming remains a niche. After all the PC gaming market is a niche market that does very well. If we want wide VR adoption, something other gaming will need to drive it.

IKROWNI

TL;DR

he wants movies and facebook for his VR experiences.

Mirimon

That’s why the crux of the workload is ran via breakoutbox…

XenoSilvano

Tis a shame that PlayStation VR only works for the PlayStation 4.

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